


Empath(y)

by slaughter_doll



Category: Original Work
Genre: Canada, Dreams, English, Français | French, Ghosts, Nightmares, Other, Self Harm, damn dyslexia is making me mispell EVERYTHING, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 04:10:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4290312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slaughter_doll/pseuds/slaughter_doll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I know you're there. You've been around a few days." My eyes didn't leave the sight of the sunrise, just on the other side of the window, as I spoke to... To him. A gentle sigh crawled its way out of my lips. "Just come out. I'm tired of pretending I haven't noticed."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"I know you're there. You've been around a few days." My eyes didn't leave the sight of the sunrise, just on the other side of the window, as I spoke to... To him. A gentle sigh crawled its way out of my lips. "Just come out. I'm tired of pretending I haven't noticed."

 _How did you know?_  
His voice was soft, uncertain, perhaps even nervous, as he stepped out of the shadows.

I sighed and ran my fingers through my teal hair. "You know I'm an empath, Declan. I could feel you there. Besides, it's not like you were hiding. And if you were, then you're horrid at it." I scoffed and muttered, "Like a chair in an empty room."

_I... I am sorry, little one._

"For fucks sake. Don't call me that." Still, I wouldn't take my eyes away from the sunset. Or, couldn't, maybe. Maybe I couldn't face the fact that he really was dead. That he was here, with me after so god damned long. I sighed again. "What are you doing here anyway?"

 _I made a promise. You made it as well, if I remember correctly._  
His translucent feet took him a few steps towards me.  
_If you die before me, will you--_

"'Promise to haunt me.' I remember." I scoffed an angry laugh, and my breath fogged the glass. "Firstly, why you'd ask such a thing in the first place is... It's unsettling. Secondly, I never asked that of you. And even if I had? You broke every other promise. So why would you keep that one?" Silence took over the room and I could feel it. His discomfort. It seeped through his pores, oozed out of his ears, poured out of his very breath. If he had any, that is. I scoffed another laugh. "Fuck you."

_Little one?_

"Fuck." I took a shuddering breath before turning to him. "You." My bare feet took me across my room in two strides, until we were nose-to-chest. I suppose I never realized how tall he really was. Thin as a rail, too. "You bastard."

 _Skylar, I am so sorry. I never meant to hurt you._  
If I didn't know any better, I'd say there were tears brimming his eyes.

"Screw you." My fingers gently ran through my hair again as I took a step back. Being so close to him... Ugh. It made it hard to breathe. "How much of it was true?"

_What?_

"How much of it was true? Was your 'Hyde' or other half true? Your past? Stories?" 

He gave me the look that one makes when they're about to cry. When they’re hurt. You know, after someone makes a painful and ludicrous assumption?  
_I never lied to you. Not even once, little one._

"' _He hates the armor you wear; that devious smile, and the words you speak can always control him._ '" I muttered one of the few quotes that really stayed with me throughout the years. He tilted his head at me, in a show of confusion. "Something you told me about... Hyde. Your other personality. Whatever."

 _You really do remember everything, don’t you?_  
He smiled and looked towards the floor.  
_Or did you write that one down?_

He nodded towards my journal on the desk. I’d been reading it a lot lately. Sometimes, I would read certain passages out loud. Not for shits and giggles. I knew he was there, and I wanted him to hear what I had to say about him. “You think I didn’t know you were listening?” I scoffed and hugged myself. “Or that you always read over my shoulder?”

_No, I figured that you did know._

I looked up at him and took in his facial features for the first time. He had a sort of natural complacent look on his face. His dark eyes were gentle, small, and evenly spaced, with perfect eyebrows just above, just the way an artist liked their characters to look. His nose almost looked Grecian, though it seemed smaller than most. Freckles gently littered the bridge, and spread out to just under his eyes. Thin lips usually formed a gentle impish smile, but sometimes they pursed when he was being stubborn. Right now though, the corners curled into a small smile.

_You have always been that smart._

“Flattery won’t help you.” I shot a glare over to him. “I’m still pissed.” The grip on my arms tensed, I suppose that I thought that if I hugged myself tight enough, he would disappear altogether. I was wrong. “You went phantom on me. Just left one day and I never heard from you again.”

 _I’m so-_  
Declan began to speak, but I raised my hand to stop him.

Slowly, I turned and faced the sunrise. The side of my body leant against the wall, and my eyes lazily traced the buildings of my city as I breathlessly whispered. “I thought you died.” Tears brimmed my eyes and it took a lot of strength to say the next few sentences. “But you hadn’t. You died a _year_ after you left. And I mourned you, all that time. I’ll never forgive you for that, Dec.”

_I know.  
_

With another sigh, I turned to face him, but let my back rest against the wall. “Did you ever finish your book?”

 _Yes. Do you want to know something?_  
I nodded.  
_Your poem is on the first page._

“Well don’t I feel special.” I scoffed again, and he looked away from me. Too hurt to even glance at me. “I-I, um, still have it. The poem.” This time it was my turn to look away. I was embarrassed that I couldn’t part with that one piece of paper. One stupid fucking page.

_I didn’t know that. I figured you would burn it, like you had with the letters from your ex.  
_

A silence fell over the room for a while, and it was nice. By now, the sun was up all the way, and the birds were singing. The smell of last night’s rain still wafted through the window, and I breathed it in. I’d missed that smell. And… I’d missed him, too. “Fine.” He tilted his head at me again. “Let’s go get your damned book.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skylar is from Quebec, but lives in Niagara, just FYI. 
> 
> Translations:  
> Et toi ça va? - Are you okay?  
> Parlez-vous l'anglais? - Do you speak English?  
> Oui, j’ai. - Yes, I have  
> Quoi - What  
> Merde - Shit

_“You be the moon, I’ll be the Earth, and when we burst, start over, oh darling.”_

I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel, humming along to Purity Ring’s song Begin Again, Dec sat next to me, staring out of the window silently. We had crossed the American border not too long ago, and were currently in Buffalo. The air around us felt stale. Too quiet, too awkward. My chest felt as if there was something I needed to say, a rope pulling me down a road completely unknown, but I had already yelled everything three hours ago. _Well_ , not everything, but those were the things I wouldn’t even allow myself to think, let alone say.

_“My moon, oh my moon, not even into another eternity, will stop your lovely orbiting. I had held it a world away, until my body began to say;”_

I turned left on the I-80, heading east. Smiling politely to the group of bikers that pulled up next to me. Some were on Harley’s, a few on Kawasaki’s, and one on a crotch-rocket, the name covered by their bag. I took a silent note of the ones that were together, two groups, and the one that was alone. Red jacket, black helmet with small black ears, much like Batman’s.

_“I need not one thing more.”_

My finger slammed against the power button to the stereo, making it shut up with a click. Dec jumped and glared at me, and the only reply he gained was me glaring at the highway in front of me, my hands death-gripping the wheel. The Batman Helmet looked over at me, but when I looked back, all I saw was my reflection in two way mirror glass over his eyes.

_What was that?_

I feigned ignorance without as much as a breath. “What was what?” Perhaps the answer was too quick, too calm, because he knew I was lying. The car sputtered as I merged over to the right-hand lane and picked up my speed.

_Don’t play dumb with me._

“I don’t like that song.”

_We’ve listened to it three times, and you sang the entire thing twice._

“Why are you even here?” The rubber of the wheel practically whined under my tight clutch and my body went tense as he began to give me the bullshit from earlier, only to have me huff and shake my head. “I meant, I can put your address into my phone and get there myself. Go home. Clean up…Or some shit. I don’t know.” And then, I felt it. He knew he didn’t need to be there, he _wanted_ to be there. He wanted nothing but to be beside me. Like there was the insatiable itch that only I could assuage. Sadness and anger flooded through me, and I wished, stronger than ever, that I wasn’t a _fucking_ empath.

Nevertheless, he sighed, picked up my phone, and typed in an address.  
_I’ll check on you in a while._

“Mm.” I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t heard that. I barely heard it myself. It was a miniscule hum in the midst of a storm.

And like that, in an instant, he was gone. And I, myself, began to feel the itch. In a fit of anger, I pulled over and slammed my fist against the wheel so hard my knuckle split open. A half moon, perhaps a ½ centimeter deep, almost like a smiling face, minus the eyes, looked up at me, a steady stream of blood dripping down to the seat. Tears welled up in my eyes as I rolled up the windows and screamed. Every emotion that swam through my veins travelled up my body and took a physical form. A frog in my throat, a knife in my chest, my heart on my sleeve. The crotch-rocket guy from earlier noticed my outbreak and pulled over behind me. He calmly walked up to the window and rapped his knuckle against it, just as I wrapped my beanie around my hand.

When I looked over, he took off the helmet with the Batman ears. “Et toi ça va?” He was beautiful. Short black hair, a little bit of stubble around the chin, perfectly equal blue/green eyes and clear skin. When he smiled, I noticed that his teeth were perfectly straight, though a little yellowed from smoking. “Parlez-vous l'anglais?” When I nodded, he continued speaking. “That looks nasty… Here,” he opened the door and gently pulled me out. “Will you let me take care of that?” Silent seconds passed by before I nodded, and then so did he. After a few moments of rummaging through his knapsack, a med kit sat opened next to me on the hood of the engine.

His hands were gentle, and covered in oil paints. “You’re an artist.” My hand reached over and admired the slender form of the fingers, then the calloused palm and thumb, before gently stroking the red-ish yellow splotches, then the blue, and the orange. “A sunset?”

He smiled brightly up at me, his canines pulling at one side of his lip. “Only another artist would know.”

A small laugh came from my lip, before my teeth trapped it, just as he had his, and my eyes flicked down to the cut on my hand. I hadn’t even noticed that it was already patched up with butterfly stiches. “I code video games for a living. That’s hardly a form of art.” I winced gently when this stranger began to wrap an ace bandage from my wrist to just above the cut.

“They’re bruised, this will hold the bones in place, in case you injured them.” We looked at each other for a moment, before he reached out the paint covered hand. “Skye.”

“How funny,” I returned the favour. “Skylar.”

“Well, _Skylar_ ,” The way my name swirled out from between his teeth caused a shiver to drill itself down my spine. “How did this happen?” Skye sat next to me and pulled out a cigarette from a blue pack, ones I recognised as Du Maurier–a Canadian brand, commonly called Du Mau’s-, as he pointed it towards me, I shook my head, but eventually said _fuck quitting_ and took one.

“Have you ever had a ghost from the past come back to haunt you?” For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to look away from my knuckle, or make myself stop savouring in the nausea at the pit of my stomach.

“Oui, j’ai.” He sighed and looked at the highway. “It sucks. Pretty badly.”

We sat in silence for a long while, what felt like hours, but… In a good way. You know? Eventually, I leaned over and placed my head on his shoulder. I didn’t know this guy, I didn’t know his past, but I could tell that he was a good person. He was about to say something when the honk of a car scared the shit out of both of us. Both of us jumped up and looked around. It took a moment to register that it wasn’t a passing car, _it was mine._ We both turned around to see Declan in shotgun, pouting like a little kid. “Quoi? Who’s that? Was he always there?”

“Merde. That’s the ghost.” I turned to Skye again, pulled a pen out of my purse, and wrote on his hand. “ _Skylar, C++ nerd. 647-614-5654. Call me xx._ ” I then thanked him for the patch job and got back in the car. As I pulled away, it was silent, but not for long.

“What the fuck was that?”

_What was what?_

“Don’t be a fucking child.”

_I don’t like that guy._

“Oh for fucks sake.” Even though I was mad at him, the itch I had felt when Dec left had gone, and indeed, my body needed not one thing more.


End file.
